Characters go ‘Astray’ in Donoghue’s stories

Mike Fischer / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel /

Published Nov 4, 2012 at 04:00AM / Updated Nov 19, 2013 at 12:31AM

“Astray” by Emma Donoghue (Little, Brown and Co., $25.99)

In her novel “Room,” Emma Donoghue let us see the world from the vantage point of a little boy in an 11-by-11-foot room. In the stories gathered in “Astray,” Donoghue busts loose, returning to her roots in historical fiction by going forth into the wider world.

Donoghue’s fellow travelers are voyagers who, between 1639 and 1968, left the world they knew for undiscovered countries from which they never returned. Each of their stories is introduced by a date and locale and followed by a brief snippet, ranging from a few lines to a few paragraphs, in which Donoghue grounds her flights of fancy in the history inspiring them.

In the initial section of “Astray,” each such flight involves an escape from confinements which has narrowed their protagonists’ choices.

In the first, an elephant and his keeper leave London’s zoo, bound for new adventures in America. In another, a Jewish woman in 18th-century New York confronts her own alienation in a culture that doesn’t understand her.

In “Last Supper at Brown’s,” a slave and his master’s wife contemplate a new life. In “Onward,” a young woman longs for a chance to start over — away from the hypocritical world of Victorian England, in which she was forced into prostitution after she and her brother were orphaned.

Each of these stories confirms Donoghue’s observation, in an illuminating Afterword, that migrants are often strangers in the land they leave as well as the one they seek — “strays,” to use her word, who cross legal, racial and sexual boundaries as well as geographic ones.

Not all of Donoghue’s characters can handle the freedom their adventures make possible. In the middle and final sections of “Astray,” men and women trying on new identities often retreat in fear.

A Creole in antebellum Louisiana locks herself in her room and pines for France. “The water turned to ice on my cheeks,” a stern New England Puritan tells us, upon finally realizing why he has been such a killjoy — and how much living it has cost him.

Connect with The Bulletin

Popular stories for News

Eighteen-year-old Jenny Lanter died this spring after sustaining injuries in a car accident. But Lanter’s parents and friends hope that her sweet spirit will continue to live on through a special dance scholarship created in her memory. Mom Renee Lanter, of Bend, believes her daughter would be very honored to know this scholarship existed, and she sees it as a positive development for the family…
... more

The reality: That is not true, said Dr. Richard Koller, a Bend neurologist. A sneeze does increase the pressure inside the skull a little bit, he said. People have worried that sneezes may kill brain cells because other things that increase pressure on the brain, such as some types of stroke, can lead to brain cell death or even the death of the person. However,…
... more

The holiest plant of the Christmas season may be a raggedy shrub with peeling bark that seems to grow best in a dusty backyard in Tempe, Ariz. This is Boswellia sacra, better known as the frankincense tree. The shrub’s gum resin is one of the three biblical gifts that the wise men bestowed on the infant Jesus. Until recently, Americans who wished to cultivate their…
... more

SALEM — For years, Bend resident Cylvia Hayes’ good relations with state officials have been a boon, helping her win contracts as a green energy consultant. Now she’s finding that her relationship with one official in particular — Gov. John Kitzhaber, her longtime companion — can be a hindrance as well. Hayes refers to herself alternately as the “first lady” and “first partner” and says…
... more

State regulators have revoked licenses to sell and produce manufactured homes from Fuqua Homes Inc. and imposed a $155,000 civil fine, saying the company, which operated a factory and dealership in Bend, took deposits but failed to deliver some homes, according to an order released Thursday. The order from the Department of Consumer and Business Services' Division of Finance and Corporate Securities states that the…
... more